Sunday May 15, 2011
Toledo Motor Speedway- Outside Garage Area
Toledo, Ohio
5:11 PM Local Time
“There he is,” I muttered to myself, as I saw the Diamond Motorsports haulers tucked away at the back of the lot, and began to push my way through the crowds towards them. The Menards 200 had just ended, and, as could be predicted, the garage area was a state of bedlam, with teams loading up haulers, fans wandering through, hoping to get a last-second autograph, or just to see up close the incredible machines they had spent the afternoon watching.
Considering Terrence now sat a meager 31st in the ARCA standings (not a horrible situation, considering he had missed the opening race of the season), the crowd in front of his hauler was understandably smaller than those of the more renowned drivers. Truth be told, it seemed, at least for the time being, that Terrence’s fanbase largely consisted of those who had been his fans while he was wrestling, and just happened to follow both pro-wrestling and ARCA racing.
My husband had already changed out of his racesuit, and was wearing a dark blue polo shirt and a pair of khakis. While the rest of his crew worked around him, Terrence stood leaning against the hauler, talking to his crew chief, a middle-aged, bearded man that I only knew as Jimbo. Despite the 26th place finish he had just taken, both men looked fairly calm and at ease, and Terrence was shrugging as he replied to a question Jimbo had just asked him. He looked up and smiled as he saw me approaching, then held up a finger, indicating that I should wait a minute, then went back to talking to Jimbo. I huffed a strand of my red hair out of my face in irritation. By the time Pollaski and I had gotten to the track, the cars were pulling out onto the circuit for the pace laps. I hadn’t seen my husband since before I left for Miami, and I was anxious to do so.
As I patiently waited for Jimbo to finish, I turned my attention to his car, the #38 Taco Bell Dodge that he’d been driving. While most of the car looked as new as it did to start the race (albeit a lot dirtier), the back end had been completely wrecked. Terrence had blown a tire early in the race, spun, and hit the wall hard. It had turned into a long afternoon, with him limping around the track to eventually finish forty-seven laps down.
A pair of strong arms grabbed me from behind, and I shrieked as I was lifted off my feet and spun around. My assailant released me, and I landed on my feet, whirling around to see my husband grinning back at me. Laughing, I threw myself into his arms, and we embraced and kissed.
“I missed you,” I murmured as he continued to squeeze me into him. He smelled like gasoline and sweat and dirt, and being trapped in a car with no air conditioning for nearly three hours, but I didn’t mind. I was just glad to be with him again.
“And I missed you too,” Terrence replied, before releasing me. He grinned at me. “How was Miami!”
“Beautiful. Hot. Sunny. Wished you were there,” I intoned.
My husband laughed in response. “I wish I was there too,” he replied. “Weather’s been a bitch up here. With the thunderstorms we had last night, I was afraid we wouldn’t even get the race in!”
I grimaced in concern as I heard the word ‘thunderstorms’. “How did Theresa do?”
Terrence shrugged. “Scared the hell out of her. Let her sleep in our bed with me. Can’t blame her really, there were some good boomers.” He looked around. “Where is she, anyways?”
“She, Pollaski, and Cassie went back to the RV,” I said, hoping that we would be heading that way soon ourselves. To my relief, Terrence slipped my hand in mine, and turned to walk away, but then stopped, turning back to say goodbye to his crew.
“Thanks, guys! I’m taking off, I’ll see you Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” I queried, as Terrence’s pit crew returned the farewell, and we began walking away from the hauler. “I thought you didn’t have to be in New Jersey until Friday evening!”
“Yeah, but then all the brass started taking a look at things, and NOW they all figure out that I’ve never competed in a road race before in my life. That’s now a concern for them.”
“Surely turning right can’t be THAT hard?” I asked as we slowly worked our way towards the exit.
“It’s more than that, hon. Different turn radiuses, elevation changes, anyways, long story short, I’ve spent half the weekend trying to convince them to not replace me with a road specialist. So they want me to spend a couple days at Mid-Ohio, and see if I can handle it.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“It’s alright,” Terrence said, shrugging. “We all gotta do shit for our jobs, right? And besides, I think this could actually be fun. I don’t gotta be Michael Schumacher out there, just not crash the car at the first chicane I come to.”
Stil, I grimaced. May was turning out to be a hard month for us to spend time together. I was leaving for Boise the next day, and now I’d be coming back to find Terrence gone to Ohio. At least we’d all still be going to Canada for Conviction together.
“So, you have fun at Breaking Point? I caught it on TV. Fun stuff,” Terrence’s voice jarred me from my thoughts, and I looked back over at him. “Loved the brawl at the end.”
“That was nuts,” I confessed, breaking my hold on Terrence’s hand momentarily to circumvent a large crowd of people that had gathered near the winners car. “And yeah... I had fun there. For the most part.”
Terrence chuckled as he retook his hand in my own. “Still pissed at Snyder?”
“Not angry,” I corrected, sighing. “Just.. confused. I don’t know where she would even get the idea of accusing me of-”
“Because she knew you’d take offense to it, and offending you is a surefire way to get attention,” Terrence replied firmly. “Look hon, Rori Snyder suckerpunched you, slammed you headfirst into the ringpost, tried to viciously open a cut, and STILL lost within a couple minutes. The only reason she’s doing what she’s doing is because any credibility she’s had has been shot to shit, and she’s trying desperately to find some way to remain relevant.”
“Pollaski reckons she’s going to be released after Shane Sanders destroys her,” I sighed. “I hope not. She’s a good kid- she’s just... misguided.”
“She also ain’t your problem anymore,” my husband said, squeezing my hand. “Rori Snyder won’t get an Evolution title shot in a million years. You, on the other hand...”
“Am three matches away from one.” I finished, smiling slightly. We walked in silence for a while after that, out the gate and into the adjacent RV lot. The lot was just as chaotic as the garage area was, the entire fleet of motorhomes packing up, already a good percentage had either left, or were waiting in the long line of RV’s waiting to leave. Our own RV had already seen most of its neighbors depart. Terrence scoffed as we darted between a gap in two RVs in the traffic jam.
“Don’t see why everyone’s so damned anxious to pull out and wait in a line,” he muttered, as we walked towards our cinnamon-hued forty-five foot Newmar King Aire. “Might as well chill until the dust settles.”
I hummed and nodded my head in agreement as I swung open the door to our RV, and climbed up the stairs. “Hey Terr-Bear!” I smiled as my daughter ran towards me, and I scooped the giggling girl up into my arms, giving her a hug and a kiss.”
I gently set Theresa down, and she bounded back over to the couch, where she had been watching Looney Tunes. Cassie sat nearby, reading a book, while Pollaski had perched himself at the table, clicking away on his laptop. He grinned as he saw Terrence and I walk in, and waved me over. “Hey, Wendy! You might wanna take a look at this.”
Curious, I walked over to the table, sliding in next to Pollaski, who turned the laptop so that I could see. Terrence leaned over me as well, trying to get a look.
“This was taken last night after Breaking Point,” my manager explained, then hit play.
I watched intently as the short video played, with Ariel Shadows leaving the building, looking fairly agitated. Even though the interview had been censored (very, VERY censored) with bleeps, I still looked alarmingly over at my daughter, relieved that she wasn’t paying attention in the slightest. I quickly looked back at the computer.
"*BLEEP!* THEM ALL! I am taking my man back home. *BLEEP* FFW, *BLEEP* the crown, *BLEEP* Crystal, *BLEEP* Wendy, and *BLEEP* whoever's got a problem with it. I got more important *BLEEP* on my mind than some go*BLEEP*n butterfly belt."
As video ended, everything went silent, save for the murmur of Looney Tunes playing on the television. I looked at the computer screen, my mouth wide-open in astonishment, unable to find my voice.
Terrence found his for me. “What the hell was that all about?”
“I’m going to guess that Ariel’s in a bad mood. A REALLY bad mood,” Pollaski said blandly.
My eyes narrowed. “No kidding.” I muttered sarcastically. “You have any idea WHY?”
My manager shrugged. “Well, I’m gonna GUESS she probably wasn’t too happy about losing to Crystal Hilton. A heckuva match, but a tough loss for her. As for you, she’s probably pissed that it turned out you were the reason her boyfriend can’t talk anymore.”
“Oh,” I nodded, looking again over at the television. Suddenly, my head snapped back so quickly my neck popped. “Wait... WHAT?”
“Turns out when you jumped on him, you might have cut off the bloodflow to his brain, and as a result hurt the part that controls speech.” Pollaski replied matter-of-factly.
My mind raced back to that night in Dallas, a couple of months before I joined FFW. Ariel’s boyfriend, Madman Szalinski, and I were facing in a ladder match. We hadn’t exactly gotten a long before that, but the weeks building up to the contest had been as hate-filled as I could ever remember. The culmination had been when Szalinski had blindsided Terrence right in front of my daughter, and attacked him brutally enough to put him in the hospital.
The match itself had been no less vicious, with Szalinski using every single opportunity he had to hurt me. The worst was when he had tried to strangle me to death by placing the ladder over my throat and standing on it. Truth be told, only Ariel’s intervention had saved me, and after that, I was pretty ticked off, and after a few kicks, I had climbed up to the turnbuckle, and hit my Irish Death foot stomp.
The searing burn of wrathful umbrage had washed over me after I landed the move, and so I did it again, not even bothering with the turnbuckle, just jumping and landing feet first on. Over and over again, I had jumped on him, having no idea about the damage I was really causing.
Until now.
“Oh, God...” I breathed, horrified. I shot an accusing look over at my manager. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Pollaski scoffed. “What am I, an RSS newsfeed? I thought you’d have known already. My bad.”
“For crying out loud,” I muttered, turning away from my manager, and throwing my husbands arm off of me. I practically ran across the RV, to where I had plugged my phone into its charger after dropping off my luggage before the race. I quickly picked up the Droid, flipping through my contact list to find Ariel.
And gasped, stunned as the phone was ripped out of my hands.
Angrily, I looked up, and saw Terrence casually tossing the Droid from one hand to another. I glared at my husband. “What are you doing? Give me back my-”
“Nope, sorry hon.” Terrence replied mildly. “Not gonna do it.”
I paused for a second, still confused as to why my husband would be teasing me, when it was clear that I was upset. Then I lunged trying to grab the phone as it passed from one hand to the other, but Terrence had anticipated it, tossing the phone higher this time, and deftly sidestepping out of the way. I stumbled, nearly bowling over Cassie in the process, as Terrence deftly caught the phone again.
By now, I could tell that Cassie and Theresa were paying attention, and I clenched my fists, my face burning in embarassment and anger. “Terrence Andrew Thompson,” I snarled, “Give me back my phone. NOW.”
Terrence paused. He looked amused by the stunt he was pulling, although there was a seriousness in his eyes. At that moment, I was too indignant to care. I’d wrestle him to the ground and use a nervehold if I had to...
“Are you gonna call Ariel?” Terrence asked, tossing the phone again, this time catching it in the same hand.
“Of course I’m going to call her!” I replied. “She’s my friend! I owe it to her to-”
“You don’t owe her anything,” Terrence replied mildly. “And she’s not your friend right now, she’s your enemy. Your opponent. The last thing you need to be doing is calling her up and apologizing because you hit a perfectly legal move on her boyfriend in a match. If you still feel that bad about it after Conviction, you can apologize then.”
“What? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I’m not going to put a friendship on hold over some match! Now give me-”
“Really?” My husband arched an eyebrow, and while his face was calm, I could see a bit of hurt creeping into his eyes. “You were more than willing to put OUR MARRIAGE on hold last year when you had to face me. Twice.”
I stopped in my tracks, and opened my mouth, but no words came out. Terrence’s words were true enough. Twice I had been scheduled to compete against Terrence last year, and both times, I had left the house, my husband, my family to be on my own in the week leading up to the match. I wanted to win, and I didn’t think I could perform to the best of my ability if I continued to live with the man who was now my enemy. Still...
“And that was a huge mistake,” I finally responded, unable to keep a tremble out of my voice. Even though I had come home with Terrence the night after the events both times, I still couldn’t remember ever feeling more destitute and alone during those weeks. “I never should have...”
“Actually, considering your performances during those matches, I’d say it was probably the right thing to do,” Terrence responded, flipping the phone again and catching it. “If you wanted to win, you couldn’t view me as your husband. You had to view me as a foe. And you sure as hell outshone me the second time around.”
“Doesn’t mean I liked it,” I protested.
“Well, yeah. But facing our friends is one of the nasty little parts of this business nobody really likes to talk about,” Terrence said quietly, suddenly completely serious. “I didn’t like facing you either, but it’s something we had to do. But we didn’t take what happened out there personally, and we were in each other’s arms the night afterwards.”
I scoffed mildly, but after a few moments thought, I nodded. “You’re probably right. Ariel and I knew from the moment we became friends that there was always a chance we would end up against each other, and it’d be a dishonor to her if I let anything cause me to hold back when we faced. If there’s still hard feelings after all of this, we’ll settle it over lunch or something.”
Besides, I thought darkly, I had tried to be encouraging and friendly to Rori Snyder in the days leading up to our match, and I remembered all too vividly how THAT turned out. There was room for friends in professional wrestling, but not amongst your opponents. Sometimes, things just had to be put on hold. Anyways, after that profanity laden video, I wasn’t sure if Ariel even wanted to be my friend anymore, anyways. I guessed I’d have to wait and find out until after Conviction.
I looked over at Cassie and Theresa. Cassie looked concerned at the confrontation between my husband and I, although Theresa looked like she was completely and utterly lost by the conversation. A glance at Pollaski told me that my manager was finding the entire spectacle fairly amusing.
“So, promise not to call Ariel?” Terrence asked, a bit of a smirk returning to his face, as he once again began tossing the phone. “Or answer if she decides to call you?”
“Yeah, if you quit throwing my phone around,” I shot back in exasperation.
“Deal,” Terrence flipped the phone up, this time towards me, and I deftly caught it. I took the Droid in my hands, and looked at it, looking accusingly back up at Terrence a couple seconds later.
“You deleted her from my contact list!”
Terrence broke into another one of his insufferable grins. “Consider it an insurance policy against temptation. Ask her to give it back to you in Morse code as she’s tapping out to the Banshee. Anyways, traffics probably cleared up. We probably should get going. I’d like to get home before midnight if at all possible.”
As Terrence walked by me, heading up to the RV’s cockpit to get us started, I watched him, feeling a mixture of admiration and exasperation. I knew that I was the idealist between the two of us, while Terrence always took a much more realistic approach to life. It led to a lot of arguing between the two of us, to the point that some observers actually thought our marriage was in a crisis. But those arguments never got out of hand, they never resulted in a jeopardization of our relationship. They simply gave both of us perspective. Maybe that’s why we had always been so successful as a tag team- reality probably lay right in the middle between our viewpoints.
I was in a combat sport, and in a combat sport, one didn’t succeed by altruism. Whatever I felt about someone, once I got in that ring, my job was simple- do what ever I could (within the rules, of course!) to bring them down and defeat them, whether they were male or female, large or small, friend or foe. Maybe after five years in the business, it should come instinctually, but sometimes, it didn’t hurt to be reminded by Terrence’s pragmatism that I had a job to do, and it wasn’t making friends.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket, and slowly walked up to the copilots seat, just to the right and behind Terrence’s drivers seat as he finished the final preparations for our departure. No, I wouldn’t be calling Ariel. The next time I’d be interacting with her wouldn’t be over a phone, or by text message, or a cup of coffee. It would be in the ring, as opponents, until the final bell had rung.
It couldn’t be any other way.
Toledo Motor Speedway- Outside Garage Area
Toledo, Ohio
5:11 PM Local Time
“There he is,” I muttered to myself, as I saw the Diamond Motorsports haulers tucked away at the back of the lot, and began to push my way through the crowds towards them. The Menards 200 had just ended, and, as could be predicted, the garage area was a state of bedlam, with teams loading up haulers, fans wandering through, hoping to get a last-second autograph, or just to see up close the incredible machines they had spent the afternoon watching.
Considering Terrence now sat a meager 31st in the ARCA standings (not a horrible situation, considering he had missed the opening race of the season), the crowd in front of his hauler was understandably smaller than those of the more renowned drivers. Truth be told, it seemed, at least for the time being, that Terrence’s fanbase largely consisted of those who had been his fans while he was wrestling, and just happened to follow both pro-wrestling and ARCA racing.
My husband had already changed out of his racesuit, and was wearing a dark blue polo shirt and a pair of khakis. While the rest of his crew worked around him, Terrence stood leaning against the hauler, talking to his crew chief, a middle-aged, bearded man that I only knew as Jimbo. Despite the 26th place finish he had just taken, both men looked fairly calm and at ease, and Terrence was shrugging as he replied to a question Jimbo had just asked him. He looked up and smiled as he saw me approaching, then held up a finger, indicating that I should wait a minute, then went back to talking to Jimbo. I huffed a strand of my red hair out of my face in irritation. By the time Pollaski and I had gotten to the track, the cars were pulling out onto the circuit for the pace laps. I hadn’t seen my husband since before I left for Miami, and I was anxious to do so.
As I patiently waited for Jimbo to finish, I turned my attention to his car, the #38 Taco Bell Dodge that he’d been driving. While most of the car looked as new as it did to start the race (albeit a lot dirtier), the back end had been completely wrecked. Terrence had blown a tire early in the race, spun, and hit the wall hard. It had turned into a long afternoon, with him limping around the track to eventually finish forty-seven laps down.
A pair of strong arms grabbed me from behind, and I shrieked as I was lifted off my feet and spun around. My assailant released me, and I landed on my feet, whirling around to see my husband grinning back at me. Laughing, I threw myself into his arms, and we embraced and kissed.
“I missed you,” I murmured as he continued to squeeze me into him. He smelled like gasoline and sweat and dirt, and being trapped in a car with no air conditioning for nearly three hours, but I didn’t mind. I was just glad to be with him again.
“And I missed you too,” Terrence replied, before releasing me. He grinned at me. “How was Miami!”
“Beautiful. Hot. Sunny. Wished you were there,” I intoned.
My husband laughed in response. “I wish I was there too,” he replied. “Weather’s been a bitch up here. With the thunderstorms we had last night, I was afraid we wouldn’t even get the race in!”
I grimaced in concern as I heard the word ‘thunderstorms’. “How did Theresa do?”
Terrence shrugged. “Scared the hell out of her. Let her sleep in our bed with me. Can’t blame her really, there were some good boomers.” He looked around. “Where is she, anyways?”
“She, Pollaski, and Cassie went back to the RV,” I said, hoping that we would be heading that way soon ourselves. To my relief, Terrence slipped my hand in mine, and turned to walk away, but then stopped, turning back to say goodbye to his crew.
“Thanks, guys! I’m taking off, I’ll see you Wednesday.”
“Wednesday?” I queried, as Terrence’s pit crew returned the farewell, and we began walking away from the hauler. “I thought you didn’t have to be in New Jersey until Friday evening!”
“Yeah, but then all the brass started taking a look at things, and NOW they all figure out that I’ve never competed in a road race before in my life. That’s now a concern for them.”
“Surely turning right can’t be THAT hard?” I asked as we slowly worked our way towards the exit.
“It’s more than that, hon. Different turn radiuses, elevation changes, anyways, long story short, I’ve spent half the weekend trying to convince them to not replace me with a road specialist. So they want me to spend a couple days at Mid-Ohio, and see if I can handle it.”
“I’m sorry,” I murmured.
“It’s alright,” Terrence said, shrugging. “We all gotta do shit for our jobs, right? And besides, I think this could actually be fun. I don’t gotta be Michael Schumacher out there, just not crash the car at the first chicane I come to.”
Stil, I grimaced. May was turning out to be a hard month for us to spend time together. I was leaving for Boise the next day, and now I’d be coming back to find Terrence gone to Ohio. At least we’d all still be going to Canada for Conviction together.
“So, you have fun at Breaking Point? I caught it on TV. Fun stuff,” Terrence’s voice jarred me from my thoughts, and I looked back over at him. “Loved the brawl at the end.”
“That was nuts,” I confessed, breaking my hold on Terrence’s hand momentarily to circumvent a large crowd of people that had gathered near the winners car. “And yeah... I had fun there. For the most part.”
Terrence chuckled as he retook his hand in my own. “Still pissed at Snyder?”
“Not angry,” I corrected, sighing. “Just.. confused. I don’t know where she would even get the idea of accusing me of-”
“Because she knew you’d take offense to it, and offending you is a surefire way to get attention,” Terrence replied firmly. “Look hon, Rori Snyder suckerpunched you, slammed you headfirst into the ringpost, tried to viciously open a cut, and STILL lost within a couple minutes. The only reason she’s doing what she’s doing is because any credibility she’s had has been shot to shit, and she’s trying desperately to find some way to remain relevant.”
“Pollaski reckons she’s going to be released after Shane Sanders destroys her,” I sighed. “I hope not. She’s a good kid- she’s just... misguided.”
“She also ain’t your problem anymore,” my husband said, squeezing my hand. “Rori Snyder won’t get an Evolution title shot in a million years. You, on the other hand...”
“Am three matches away from one.” I finished, smiling slightly. We walked in silence for a while after that, out the gate and into the adjacent RV lot. The lot was just as chaotic as the garage area was, the entire fleet of motorhomes packing up, already a good percentage had either left, or were waiting in the long line of RV’s waiting to leave. Our own RV had already seen most of its neighbors depart. Terrence scoffed as we darted between a gap in two RVs in the traffic jam.
“Don’t see why everyone’s so damned anxious to pull out and wait in a line,” he muttered, as we walked towards our cinnamon-hued forty-five foot Newmar King Aire. “Might as well chill until the dust settles.”
I hummed and nodded my head in agreement as I swung open the door to our RV, and climbed up the stairs. “Hey Terr-Bear!” I smiled as my daughter ran towards me, and I scooped the giggling girl up into my arms, giving her a hug and a kiss.”
I gently set Theresa down, and she bounded back over to the couch, where she had been watching Looney Tunes. Cassie sat nearby, reading a book, while Pollaski had perched himself at the table, clicking away on his laptop. He grinned as he saw Terrence and I walk in, and waved me over. “Hey, Wendy! You might wanna take a look at this.”
Curious, I walked over to the table, sliding in next to Pollaski, who turned the laptop so that I could see. Terrence leaned over me as well, trying to get a look.
“This was taken last night after Breaking Point,” my manager explained, then hit play.
I watched intently as the short video played, with Ariel Shadows leaving the building, looking fairly agitated. Even though the interview had been censored (very, VERY censored) with bleeps, I still looked alarmingly over at my daughter, relieved that she wasn’t paying attention in the slightest. I quickly looked back at the computer.
"*BLEEP!* THEM ALL! I am taking my man back home. *BLEEP* FFW, *BLEEP* the crown, *BLEEP* Crystal, *BLEEP* Wendy, and *BLEEP* whoever's got a problem with it. I got more important *BLEEP* on my mind than some go*BLEEP*n butterfly belt."
As video ended, everything went silent, save for the murmur of Looney Tunes playing on the television. I looked at the computer screen, my mouth wide-open in astonishment, unable to find my voice.
Terrence found his for me. “What the hell was that all about?”
“I’m going to guess that Ariel’s in a bad mood. A REALLY bad mood,” Pollaski said blandly.
My eyes narrowed. “No kidding.” I muttered sarcastically. “You have any idea WHY?”
My manager shrugged. “Well, I’m gonna GUESS she probably wasn’t too happy about losing to Crystal Hilton. A heckuva match, but a tough loss for her. As for you, she’s probably pissed that it turned out you were the reason her boyfriend can’t talk anymore.”
“Oh,” I nodded, looking again over at the television. Suddenly, my head snapped back so quickly my neck popped. “Wait... WHAT?”
“Turns out when you jumped on him, you might have cut off the bloodflow to his brain, and as a result hurt the part that controls speech.” Pollaski replied matter-of-factly.
My mind raced back to that night in Dallas, a couple of months before I joined FFW. Ariel’s boyfriend, Madman Szalinski, and I were facing in a ladder match. We hadn’t exactly gotten a long before that, but the weeks building up to the contest had been as hate-filled as I could ever remember. The culmination had been when Szalinski had blindsided Terrence right in front of my daughter, and attacked him brutally enough to put him in the hospital.
The match itself had been no less vicious, with Szalinski using every single opportunity he had to hurt me. The worst was when he had tried to strangle me to death by placing the ladder over my throat and standing on it. Truth be told, only Ariel’s intervention had saved me, and after that, I was pretty ticked off, and after a few kicks, I had climbed up to the turnbuckle, and hit my Irish Death foot stomp.
The searing burn of wrathful umbrage had washed over me after I landed the move, and so I did it again, not even bothering with the turnbuckle, just jumping and landing feet first on. Over and over again, I had jumped on him, having no idea about the damage I was really causing.
Until now.
“Oh, God...” I breathed, horrified. I shot an accusing look over at my manager. “Why didn’t you tell me about this?”
Pollaski scoffed. “What am I, an RSS newsfeed? I thought you’d have known already. My bad.”
“For crying out loud,” I muttered, turning away from my manager, and throwing my husbands arm off of me. I practically ran across the RV, to where I had plugged my phone into its charger after dropping off my luggage before the race. I quickly picked up the Droid, flipping through my contact list to find Ariel.
And gasped, stunned as the phone was ripped out of my hands.
Angrily, I looked up, and saw Terrence casually tossing the Droid from one hand to another. I glared at my husband. “What are you doing? Give me back my-”
“Nope, sorry hon.” Terrence replied mildly. “Not gonna do it.”
I paused for a second, still confused as to why my husband would be teasing me, when it was clear that I was upset. Then I lunged trying to grab the phone as it passed from one hand to the other, but Terrence had anticipated it, tossing the phone higher this time, and deftly sidestepping out of the way. I stumbled, nearly bowling over Cassie in the process, as Terrence deftly caught the phone again.
By now, I could tell that Cassie and Theresa were paying attention, and I clenched my fists, my face burning in embarassment and anger. “Terrence Andrew Thompson,” I snarled, “Give me back my phone. NOW.”
Terrence paused. He looked amused by the stunt he was pulling, although there was a seriousness in his eyes. At that moment, I was too indignant to care. I’d wrestle him to the ground and use a nervehold if I had to...
“Are you gonna call Ariel?” Terrence asked, tossing the phone again, this time catching it in the same hand.
“Of course I’m going to call her!” I replied. “She’s my friend! I owe it to her to-”
“You don’t owe her anything,” Terrence replied mildly. “And she’s not your friend right now, she’s your enemy. Your opponent. The last thing you need to be doing is calling her up and apologizing because you hit a perfectly legal move on her boyfriend in a match. If you still feel that bad about it after Conviction, you can apologize then.”
“What? That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve ever heard! I’m not going to put a friendship on hold over some match! Now give me-”
“Really?” My husband arched an eyebrow, and while his face was calm, I could see a bit of hurt creeping into his eyes. “You were more than willing to put OUR MARRIAGE on hold last year when you had to face me. Twice.”
I stopped in my tracks, and opened my mouth, but no words came out. Terrence’s words were true enough. Twice I had been scheduled to compete against Terrence last year, and both times, I had left the house, my husband, my family to be on my own in the week leading up to the match. I wanted to win, and I didn’t think I could perform to the best of my ability if I continued to live with the man who was now my enemy. Still...
“And that was a huge mistake,” I finally responded, unable to keep a tremble out of my voice. Even though I had come home with Terrence the night after the events both times, I still couldn’t remember ever feeling more destitute and alone during those weeks. “I never should have...”
“Actually, considering your performances during those matches, I’d say it was probably the right thing to do,” Terrence responded, flipping the phone again and catching it. “If you wanted to win, you couldn’t view me as your husband. You had to view me as a foe. And you sure as hell outshone me the second time around.”
“Doesn’t mean I liked it,” I protested.
“Well, yeah. But facing our friends is one of the nasty little parts of this business nobody really likes to talk about,” Terrence said quietly, suddenly completely serious. “I didn’t like facing you either, but it’s something we had to do. But we didn’t take what happened out there personally, and we were in each other’s arms the night afterwards.”
I scoffed mildly, but after a few moments thought, I nodded. “You’re probably right. Ariel and I knew from the moment we became friends that there was always a chance we would end up against each other, and it’d be a dishonor to her if I let anything cause me to hold back when we faced. If there’s still hard feelings after all of this, we’ll settle it over lunch or something.”
Besides, I thought darkly, I had tried to be encouraging and friendly to Rori Snyder in the days leading up to our match, and I remembered all too vividly how THAT turned out. There was room for friends in professional wrestling, but not amongst your opponents. Sometimes, things just had to be put on hold. Anyways, after that profanity laden video, I wasn’t sure if Ariel even wanted to be my friend anymore, anyways. I guessed I’d have to wait and find out until after Conviction.
I looked over at Cassie and Theresa. Cassie looked concerned at the confrontation between my husband and I, although Theresa looked like she was completely and utterly lost by the conversation. A glance at Pollaski told me that my manager was finding the entire spectacle fairly amusing.
“So, promise not to call Ariel?” Terrence asked, a bit of a smirk returning to his face, as he once again began tossing the phone. “Or answer if she decides to call you?”
“Yeah, if you quit throwing my phone around,” I shot back in exasperation.
“Deal,” Terrence flipped the phone up, this time towards me, and I deftly caught it. I took the Droid in my hands, and looked at it, looking accusingly back up at Terrence a couple seconds later.
“You deleted her from my contact list!”
Terrence broke into another one of his insufferable grins. “Consider it an insurance policy against temptation. Ask her to give it back to you in Morse code as she’s tapping out to the Banshee. Anyways, traffics probably cleared up. We probably should get going. I’d like to get home before midnight if at all possible.”
As Terrence walked by me, heading up to the RV’s cockpit to get us started, I watched him, feeling a mixture of admiration and exasperation. I knew that I was the idealist between the two of us, while Terrence always took a much more realistic approach to life. It led to a lot of arguing between the two of us, to the point that some observers actually thought our marriage was in a crisis. But those arguments never got out of hand, they never resulted in a jeopardization of our relationship. They simply gave both of us perspective. Maybe that’s why we had always been so successful as a tag team- reality probably lay right in the middle between our viewpoints.
I was in a combat sport, and in a combat sport, one didn’t succeed by altruism. Whatever I felt about someone, once I got in that ring, my job was simple- do what ever I could (within the rules, of course!) to bring them down and defeat them, whether they were male or female, large or small, friend or foe. Maybe after five years in the business, it should come instinctually, but sometimes, it didn’t hurt to be reminded by Terrence’s pragmatism that I had a job to do, and it wasn’t making friends.
I slipped my phone back into my pocket, and slowly walked up to the copilots seat, just to the right and behind Terrence’s drivers seat as he finished the final preparations for our departure. No, I wouldn’t be calling Ariel. The next time I’d be interacting with her wouldn’t be over a phone, or by text message, or a cup of coffee. It would be in the ring, as opponents, until the final bell had rung.
It couldn’t be any other way.
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